The American Transportation Research Institute, the trucking industry's not-for-profit research organization, released the results of its Truck Parking Diary research, where commercial drivers provided detailed documentation of their challenges in looking for safe, available truck parking. Participating drivers recorded their parking experiences and issues over 14 days of driving, representing over 4,700 unique parking stops documented in the diaries.

ATRI's report brings important granularity to the specific issues faced by drivers compared to other truck parking studies. Among the findings, drivers looking for parking between the hours of 4:00 p.m. and midnight face a confluence of challenges including increased search times, and truck parking spaces clogged by non-commercial vehicles, which results in drivers parking in undesignated or unauthorized locations such as roadway shoulders or ramps during those same times.

ATRI's diary research also documented the amount of lost revenue time that drivers experience by parking earlier than they otherwise needed to, just to find parking. With an average of 56 minutes of revenue drive time sacrificed by drivers per day, the parking shortage effectively reduces an individual driver's productivity by 9,300 revenue-earning miles a year, which equates to lost wages of $4,600 annually.

The ATRI truck parking diaries also quantified the negative impact that the Electronic Logging Device (ELD) mandate will likely have on the parking issue. Drivers utilizing ELDs were more likely to spend over 30 minutes looking for available parking than did drivers without an ELD.

Based on the diary findings, ATRI's report offers recommendations for a number of industry stakeholders, including public sector providers of parking at rest areas, private truck stop operators and motor carriers -- all designed to reduce the challenges faced by commercial drivers when looking for available parking.